Prosumer digital image management has not progressed to our advantage

Every so often the software market fails. I've had this happen to me a few times. From 1997 to 2007 I used a variety of PalmOS devices for what we used to call "personal information management" (PIM) - including Contacts, Notes, Tasks and Calendaring. My many PalmPilot/Palm handheld stylus devices synchronized by cable connection with Palm desktop software.

PalmOS died around the time the first iPhone came out. That original iPhone was both revolutionary and crappy. Functionally it was a huge regression from PalmOS Calendaring and other PIM solutions, but it was immediately clear that the iPhone was the future (seriously, there were no honest skeptics). Palm had been ailing already, but at that moment it was utterly dead.

It took three years for the iPhone to develop useable solutions for the "PIM-4" that worked across devices (often using either Google or Microsoft Exchange). During that time I had no handheld solution; I returned to using a paper Franklin planner. Finally, in 2010 or so, I was able to transition to the iPhone and iOS.

The market failure of digital image (and video) management has lasted longer and there's no end in site. This means something.

Things were actually looking pretty good for image and video management in 2015. Apple had consumer (iPhoto) and prosumer/professional (Aperture) applications that (mostly) shared the same image library. Things were not perfect -- Aperture had had years of horrible bugs and performance issues, but in retrospect this was a golden age. SSDs were fixing the iPhoto/Aperture performance issues and there were several reasonably priced alternatives including Adobe Lightroom. We didn't know how well we had it.

And then 2015 was when Apple killed both Aperture and iPhoto. There was no replacement for Aperture; users were left stranded with limited ability to migrate to another platform. Photos replaced iPhoto, but in most ways it was a functional regression. There was only one Photos advantage -- it promised a cloud-centric approach to image management with some limited backup features. If your iPhone or laptop was lost or destroyed your Apple Cloud images were probably safe -- as long as you paid for storage or didn't get locked out of iCloud by a phone thief.

Several alternative prosumer image management solutions emerged. But they all had the same problem Aperture had -- they all had severe data lock. If the software were to be discontinued, as happens to most products, there would be no way to extract one's images, image edits, and image metadata (ratings, keywords, titles, descriptions, albums, and on and on). In addition, perhaps inspired by the power of this data lock, many vendors moved to a subscription model. Adobe Lightroom now costs $120 a year, if you don't pay your photo library is essentially dead. Adobe can, if they wish, double or triple that price and customers will simply have to pay up. (I don't know what happens to the image library when a subscriber dies.)

I hoped Apple Photos would mature and develop more advanced features, but it has essentially languished. Recently Apple introduced a "Shared Library" model that is complex to use and, in my experience, has weird bugs and permission problems. (Lesson to users - if you ask Apple for something be prepared to regret your request.)

Eight years after Aperture died there still is not a great prosumer photo management solution for macOS customers. All the options have Hotel California Syndrome -- you can check-in but you can never leave. Apple's only option, the most natural fit for a macOS users, is dreadful and may be deteriorating. Many choices are subscription based and it's very easy for vendors to raise costs.

It's not hard to create a new standards and file based photo management solution. The file system does much of the work. Adobe has an open specification for image metadata management (XMP). Image to album, project, folder relationships are simple row triples. We've known how integrate external image editors for decades [1].

It's not hard ... but it hasn't happened. No vendor has decided to disrupt the marketplace and no open source (really open data structure is what we care about) solution has emerged.

Why not?

My best guess is that the Cloud is the problem. We've only gradually learned how to build responsive synchronizing Cloud products and they are not intrinsically file based. Development is much more challenging and the data lock advantage is irresistible for incumbents.

In the absence of a decent solution vendors are starting to build around the Apple Photos framework. This week Power Photos has a migration and access project. CYME Peakto is some mixture of Photos extension and standalone management solution. Houdah Photos Workbench adds a minuscule number of missing features to Photos.app. I can sort of imagine who these products might work, but Photos is a terrible foundation on which to build.

It's easy to image ways Apple could help, but they've been butchering photo management for a long time. They appear to be broken. The more realistic hope is that it will become easier for open source and other vendors to implement a standards based Cloud solution that would allow library migration between cooperating vendors - either through direct Cloud-Cloud communication or (better) a file based interchange format (what's a TB or two between friends?). I would be happy to pay a $200/year subscription fee for that kind of data freedom solution.

I've spent 7-8 years sitting on Mojave preparing to migrate to Apple Photos. The more I use Apple Photos the less I like this idea.  At this point I expect to convert my beloved 2015 MacBook Air to a non-networked Aperture machine and purchase a new M2 machine for my other work. Since Ventura Photos.app no longer supports importing Aperture Libraries. I'll be looking for other migration options over the next one to two years. Maybe some vendor will decide to disrupt the data-lock. In the meanwhile I'll test Power Photos migration by periodically migrating my Aperture library to Photos.

[1] For each image store original, the proprietary image editor non-destructive edit recipe, and the most recent edited version in a user-defined format (lossy or lossless). If the editor is or changed the edit recipe is useless, bu the edited version is good.

Tech regressions: MORE, Quicken, PalmOS, iOS, Podcasts, Aperture, Music, iPad photo slide shows, and toasters.

One of the odder experiences of aging is living through technology regressions. I’ve seen a few — solutions that go away and are never replaced.

Symantec’s classicMac MORE 3.1 was a great outliner/editing tool with the best style sheet implementation I’ve seen. It died around 1991. The closest thing today would be Omni Outliner — 16 years later. There’s still no comparable Style Sheet support.

Quicken for DOS with 3.5” monthly diskette records of credit card transactions was the most reliable and useable personal accounting tool I’ve experienced — though even it had problems with database corruption. I think that was the 1980s. Today I use Quicken for Mac, a niche product with unreliable transfer of financial information, questionable data security, and limited investment tools.

PalmOS Datebk 5 was an excellent calendaring tool with good desktop sync (for a while the Mac had the best ‘personal information management’ companion). That was in the 1990s. When PalmOS died we went years without an alternative. I briefly returned to using a Franklin Planner. Somewhere around year 3 of iOS we had equivalent functionality again — and a very painful transition.

iOS and macOS have seen particularly painful combinations of progressions and regressions. OS X / macOS photo management was at its best somewhere around the end of Snow Leopard and Aperture 3.1 (memory fuzzy, not sure they overlapped). OS X photo solutions had finally reached a good state after years of iPhoto screw-ups — the professional and home products more or less interoperated. All Apple needed to do was polish Aperture’s rough edges and fix bugs. Instead they sunset Aperture and gave us Photos.app — a big functional regression. Apple did something similar with iMovie; it’s much harder to make home “movies” than it once was.

iOS was at its most reliable around version 6. So Apple blew it up. Since that time Podcasts.app has gone from great to bad to not-so-bad to abysmal. The iPad used to have a great digital picture frame capability tied to screen lock — Apple took that away. For a while there was a 3rd party app that worked with iCloud photo streams, I could remotely add images to my father’s iPad slideshow digital picture frame. There’s nothing that works as well now; as I write this I’m working through a web of bugs and incompetence (I suspect a desperate timeout stuck into iTunes/iOS sync) to sneak some photos from Aperture to an iPad.

Apple Music is following the path of Podcasts.app as Apple moves to ending the sale of music (probably 2019). At the same time iTunes is being divided into dumbed down subunits (iBooks regression). The last 2-3 revisions of iTunes have been so bad that this feels almost like a mercy killing.

We don’t have a  way to avoid these regressions. Once we could have gotten off the train, now the train stations are dangerous neighborhoods of lethal malware. We need to keep upgrading, and so much is bundled with macOS and iOS that we can’t find 3rd party alternatives. Data lock is ubiquitous now.

I think regressions are less common outside digital world. It’s true toasters aren’t what they were, but since 2006 Chinese products have become better made and more reliable. Perhaps the closest thing to tech regressions in the material world is the chaos of pharma prices.

This takes a toll. There are so many better ways to spend my life, and too few minutes to waste. I wonder what these regressions do to non-geeks; I don’t think it goes well for them.

Beyond Simplenote: I still want a graph layer (concept map) overlay for my memory augmentation notes collection

I still want a graph layer atop my notes.

Yes, I want my personal locally stored data unlocked memex. Since the passing fad of the web is now, you know, passing, maybe I’ll get one.

Maybe someone will play with this now that there’s not much point in doing another searchable memory augmentation app. Apple and Google each have their “good enough” solutions. Those solutions have scary data lock issues, but for their vendors that’s a feature, not a defect. (For the record, I’m still on Simplenote/nvAlt, despite the extremely very insanely annoying search bug in the Simplenote Mac client. [1])

The idea is as old as time. Each open data format note has a title, a body, tags, and a unique identifier. The app maintains a separate data store of noteID pairs (relationships, no directionality or additional relationship attributes necessary).  When viewing a note one sees titles of related notes. There’s a UI for viewing the graph that also treats tags as nodes [3], and a UI for editing relationships.

The key is that the individual notes remain separate files and the note-note store is plaintext/rich text as well. [2]

One day…

PS. I think this was kind of what Gopher did. 

- fn -

[1] My own extended memory collection has moved through DOS text files, FileMaker Pro text base, PalmOS Notes, DateBk Memo, AvantGo files, Outlook Notes, Evernote, Google Notes (killed!), Toodledo Notes/Appigo Notebook,  and Simplenote/ResophNotes/NotationalVelocity/nvAlt. No wonder I’m a nut on data lock issues and distrust Cloud solutions for extended memory even as I use them. Also: Before Simplenote, Palm Notes, iOS Notes, Keep, EverNote and OneNote there was Tornado for DOS. 

[2] Remember when Mac Classic gave every file its own unique ID? Those were the days. How to get the unique ID for the notes is the trick for a plaintext implementation especially across platforms. With rich text one can bury the unique ID in the metadata. Unique ID could be an IP6 URI.

[3] Remember when graph data visualization was a thing? That was the early 90s I think, around the time of VRML and MCF/RDF.

See also: 

(This is started out as a tiny post but I kept finding more old material I wanted to think about …)

• All I want for Christmas is a graph (mind-map) … on App.net 11/2012 discussion of this on ADN.
• XMind: Impressions and comments on the mind mapping market 11/2012. I buried the lede in this post, the discussion of the graph layer for a Notes collection is buried within. I gave up on XMind because client-side Java died.
• Tinderbox, Simplenote, MindNode and data freedom 10/2011. Earlier version of this plea. Lists some Personal Information Managers I’ve known. My plaintext/rich text standards love is born of much painful experience.
• Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, SimpleNote for iPhone and Notational Velocity 7/2010
• Cloud data: Should I trust (Simplenote) Simperium? 8/2010. Only while nvAlt works.
• Before Simplenote, Palm Notes, iOS Notes, Keep, EverNote and OneNote there was Tornado for DOS. 
• Taking note: Tornado Notes Lives—Sort of (an entire blog on note taking. I just subscribed!)
• Escape from Outlook Notes - ResophNotes, SimpleNote for iPhone and Notational Velocity 7/2010
• Palm/Palm Pilot: Personal Experiences and Tips: my old Palm Pilot web page. For nostalgia.
• Jon Udell’s Interviews with Innovators: Evernote as Memex 7/2008. (Evernote is still in business!)
• Gordon’s Notes: xanadu and Gordon's Notes: memory management
• Full text search and digital prostheses: new email, new mind 7/2008 - A few years after full text really went mainstream. This doesn’t seem to show up on in our productivity stats, which is more than a bit curious. It is almost as if digital tech is simultaneously increasing and decreasing economic productivity, so we see only the delta.
• The Mundaneum 2008
• Mac NoteTaker for PalmOS with TextMate 1/2006 (oh, the pain)
• Palm to iPhone - the summary 8/2008
• Farewell Palm I didn’t get rid of all my old PalmOS gear until 2010
• The rise of software rental (aka software as service) 2/2010
• Moving Palm notes to Toodledo via CSV file - what worked. (Hard!) 9/2008
• Google’s IQ boost is only beginning 12/2009. Even as I wrote that Google was making a hard turn into evilplusness. Now it’s the AI assistant moment.
• Project Memfail: Tackling my search space problem 9/2013. I rely on my Notes as pointers to other stores but I still need Google’s increasingly shaking custom search engines.
• Thinking tools 2014 - holding steady but future unclear 5/2014. Two years later it’s basically the same toolset, but I created kateva.org/sh as a backup given ADN’s expected lifespan.
• Why we need to retire at sixty 3/2010. Memory augmentation is not an option.

The eBook is dying. I'm the only person on earth who blames the DRM.

My main workaround for eBook misery has been to buy from Google Play, strip the Adobe DRM, and store the ePub (really should be written EPUB but nobody does that) files in folders in Google Drive.

I do this because Apple is incompetent and, among other things, can’t produce a workable iOS eBook reader (Wait, audiobooks are now worse). A set of folders and descriptive file names is the most scalable solution we can manage across iOS and OS X. Yeah, I could leave Apple — if I cut off my right arm. Apple and Google live and breathe customer lock-in, and i’m well locked.

Since iOS 9 and some Google Drive update this no longer works. It still works for dropbox, so this is probably Google’s fault.

Nonetheless, it makes eBooks suck even more. 

Which brings me to those recent articles pointing out that people now buy paper books, not eBooks. I’ve read explanations ranging from mystical beauties of paper to the high cost of digital books. Nobody mentions the DRM (FairPlay, Adobe, etc) and the data lock, including proprietary file formats, that block development of decent cross-platform eBook solutions.

I feel like a raving loon. Or like the sighted man in the country of the blind ranting about the approaching lava flow.

Damnit Jim, it’s the DRM. 

How data lock destroys the customer experience - Apple edition.

But for FairPlay, I would not use iOS 9 audiobooks. I wouldn’t swear every time it loses its place. I wouldn’t be pissed at Apple.

But for proprietary data formats I would not use Apple Aperture. I wouldn’t be pissed at Apple.

And so on.

No, Apple News.app is not necessarily evil. Why do you ask?

[When first wrote this I chose an article, that, by chance, didn’t have a redirect to the original site. Which means I got things a wee bit wrong. Sirshannon gently corrected me. So now a bit of a rewrite …]

Viewing what I thought was a NYT article in News.app (turns out to be an Apple article that showed up on NYT page, which is kind of interesting) I can use Pinner.app 4.0 to create a Pinboard: Bookmark. That bookmark includes a URL like this:

https://apple.news/ABLDsKpUXSOafJmAr1FFtNg

From Pinboard app.net pourover and IFTTT (still around) share that link and my comment to app.net, twitter and my kateva.org/sh personal archive.

So far, so open. But what happens next?

If you access the particular link on an iOS device Apple launches News.app and you can view it there — both Safari.app and Chrome.app do the same thing.

If you access the link anywhere else you get this:

However, that’s not the end of the story (thought I thought it was). This link, opened in a web browser, redirects to a web page:

https://alpha.app.net/sirshannon/post/65149315#65148990

Apple does not redirect to the web version of the article. With NYT and other sources I chose one can open the News page in Safari.

This isn’t is surprising for two reasons. The first is that, even more than Google, Apple is all about Roach Motel class lock-in. The second is that, unlike the RSS of old, News.app has a viable ad-funded business model. Links to the open (perennially dying) web don’t fit that model.

So, despite my dire expectations, Apple, for now, is providing redirects to the web source. This doesn’t mean Apple will never interfere with the distribution of information that would hurt Apple’s business or offend its executives, and my confusion between NYT and Apple content is a bit weird (user error?), but for now News.app isn’t necessarily evil. I’ll be staying with Reeder and the lost mist-enshrouded all but forgotten Shangri La of RSS, Feedbin and Reeder until the last link dies  I’ll be experimenting with sharing News.app articles from it via RSS, Feedbin and Reeder ...

Tools: emulating (Rally) Agile work using Appigo ToDo.app and ToDo Cloud

My circumstances have changed. I may have more to say on that later; even in the sort term it is probably a change for the better. But of course life must be lived forward and understood backwards and all that.

One of the benefits of my new position is an opportunity to revisit my Tools. At one time (less so now) I’d read that tools didn’t matter, it was all about … something. Process maybe, or magic. This was sometimes used to justify a lack of investment in tools to support getting work done. I won’t bother refuting this idea, it’s self-evidently wrong.

Tool choices shape everything. I like Tools that last years to decades; switching costs are often high [10]. In practice, since modern software has very short lifespans, this means choosing adaptable tools and, when data lifespan is longer than tool life expectancy, portable data. For a serious Tool complexity and learning curve don’t bother me, but complexity shortens already too short software lifespans and and usually binds a Tool to a single platform (web typically). So I reluctantly favor simplicity - just enough functionality to do what I need. (I despise the current fashion for early delivery of barely working products, but that’s another story.)

These past few days I’ve been choosing my go-forward task and project management tool. Over the past few years I’ve used a mixture of Google/Outlook Calendars (don't underestimate the power of the Calendar), Appigo ToDo.app for iOS with sync to Toodledo for web access and data freedom, and RallyDev’s “Rally” Agile project/task management software.

I could write a book on the RallyAgile (which is Agile shaped by Rally) and the twisted evolution of that tortured product. It is hard to watch software adolescence — the drinking, the reckless driving, the law breakin … then, if one is lucky, the emergence of a somewhat broken product that may do some good in the world.

Suffice to say there are things I liked about the way I adapted RallyAgile, such as Features that are completed in 3-10 weeks of work, Feature-Stories that map to 1-10 days of work, and Feature-Story-Tasks that map to 1-6 hours of work. I sized “Stories” [1] by “Points” where a “Point” is 5 hours of work [2], and where a Story could be any one of 1, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20 Points [3]. I liked two week iterations [4] as a practical planning unit - a period where each task was (tentatively) assigned Calendar blocks and where one could focus on getting Stories complete rather than constantly replanning. I liked having protected time for planning a “Release” (set of Features basically) and for planning an “Iteration” (2-3 week collection of Stories), time to review and improve process, and time to look ahead and reassess “Features” and “Release”.

Today I’ve made my first pass at a set of Tools (and, yes, practices) that will give me the functionality I want within the constraints [5] of time, budget, familiarity, platform (Mac/web) and the requirements of longevity. In bullet form, here’s my list:

• Google Calendar: Well, I’m certainly not going to use anything Apple owns [6], and Outlook is owned by ZombieSoft. So pretty much narrows that down.
• Appigo ToDo and ToDo Cloud: I never seriously considered Rally. Omni products are too platform specific and I fear lifespan. My use of Toodledo was a path-dependency accident of history, and now that Appigo has fixed task-creation-by-email I can switch fully. Primary downside is data lock [7]. My next option would have been Trello, but there’s no native Mac client, I don’t need distributed team support, it’s complex, the nomenclature is odd, etc. [8]

Here’s how I map “Agile” style of “getting things done” [9] to Appigo ToDo

• Tasks -> Tasks. (Tasks are are tied to projects may get Stars, not sure if I need to do that)
• Stories -> Projects
• Features -> List Name (Contexts and Tags will take on some of the things I use List Names for).

I think I’ll put “hours” and “points” into the Titles of Tasks and Stories.

 

The relation of “Features” to bigger Goals/Initiatives/etc I plan to map out in MindNode.app, but that’s another post.

Tasks associated with “Stories” get slots on the Calendar. I will still use Appigo ToDo for tasks unrelated to “Features”/“Projects”, those have the usual ABC priority (simplified from old Franklin/GTD priorities) which work like this:

• A/High: Get Due Date and time on calendar
• B/Medium: May get a due date, may have calendar time
• C/Low: No due date, no calendar

I’ll update this post in future as I fill in the rough spots.

- fn -

[1] Without going into details on my own twisted adaptation of Agile, I dislike the word “Story” and all of it’s subject-action baggage. I use “Story” to mean a testable unit of work that is composed of tasks, is measured in “points” where a “point” is 5 hours of real work, and may be part of a “Feature” (which is, etc).

[2] Ok, one more detail. The mysticism about the meaning of a “Story” "Point” also annoys.

[3] Fibonacci more or less, where as Points go up so does uncertainty. I was the best Estimator I know of — I’d do my initial Story estimates, decompose to Tasks and assign hours to tasks, sum the hours and divide by 5, then round up to next Fibonacci number (so 11 hours is 3 points). When I did Task estimates I assumed an average rather than ideal path, and adjusted for dependencies — esp. on unreliable corporate infrastructure.

[4] In practice this was too much planning overhead with distributed teams; 3 weeks is better in that case. I like 2 weeks for local teams. I could write another book on doing corporate software development with distributed teams.

[5] Ahh, Constraints. So important to choice, thus project planning. Could write a book about those too :-). Constraints are my friend, a relative of Requirements I suppose.

[6] Has any company ever killed more data, data formats, products and platforms? Apple is a charming TV sociopath serial-killer of a company.

[7] App.net.@clarkgoble tells me there’s a SQLite database and Todo Cloud data is CalDAV and theoretically extractable, though I suspect much would be lost. There’s also the back door of switching back to Toodledo and their export features, but that’s a cheat. I wish Toodledo had implemented full-text search, but I understand my task volume and complexity is not their market.

[8] I’m keeping on eye on Trello. Familiarity and time were constraints too.

[9] Yeah, GTD and all kinds of old Franklin stuff on goals, etc all fit in here, but that’s yet another book.

[10] In writing this post I reviewed past blog posts. It wasn’t too hard to switch from Franklin Planner paper to the PalmOS in the 90s, but the 00s switch from PalmOS productivity Tools to early iOS was brutal. Awful. Horrible. MobileMe… argggggghhh. It went on for years, no thanks to Apple [6] but sincere thanks to pre-Evil Google. The pain of that switch is one reason I’m reluctant to commit to anything novel - like Trello.

See also

• Gordon's Tech: Trello - an orientation review 11/2013
• Gordon's Tech: Getting Things Done and Managing Email with Lookout for Outlook 12/2004: I still do email this way but I do a lot more Calendar scheduling within an “iteration”.
• Gordon's Tech: The Fallows Summary of Getting Things Done (GTD) 10/2004
• Gordon's Tech: Toodledo gets it 8/2008: I’ve used them for 7 years! Not a bad run. They do a good job and nobody beats them for data freedoms.
• Gordon's Tech: Using Outlook Tasks: a mini-tutorial 8/2008: Outlook may be dead but there’s a lot of power there.
• Gordon's Tech: Getting Things Done: integrating the Outlook add-in with Palm synchronization across multiple machines 9/2004: PTSD. Ugh.
• Gordon's Notes: Google - please give me tasks that appear on my calendar 8/2009. Despite the title is really about how I did tasks then - which is quite similar to now. I’d forgotten I started doing Agile in 2009. By the time Google introduced their half-hearted task/calendar integration I’d changed directions.
• Gordon's Notes: What the iPhone needs is Gorilla Haven’s DateBk6 1/2009: Amazing how little progress has been made with task/calendar integration. I can only assume the Gods are interfering lest we storm the gates of Heaven. Seriously, why don’t we have smarter task/calendar software? i could write another book about this, or at least another book-length blog post. Pimlico actually has an Android app as of 2015.
• Gordon's Notes: Task management: a feature request 9/2008; Pre Evil-Google, when we used to ask for boons. Still waiting for this one.
• Gordon's Tech: Toodledo iPhone vs. Appigo Todo.app 10/2008: How I ended up with both.
• Gordon's Notes: Beating email - it's doable. Here's how. 7/2008. Early version, I got better.
• Gordon's Notes: Inbox zero - mastering corporate email 1/2010. Traffic management is key. I just discovered I still have a presentation online about this. In the corporate setting I went to “Sentbox zero” — something so advanced I fear to describe it.
• Gordon's Tech: Creating Google events from email and SMS 11/2010: Alas, the SMS creation feature is gone. Google’s email/event create support is a bit flaky.
• Gordon's Tech: Palm: 2003-2013. Mostly pain of transition.
• Gordon's Tech: pda and Gordon's Tech: PIM: way more like this. Someday I should clean up those two tags.

A data lock free local file format for a concept map or mind map application

It occurred to me, probably not for the first time, that there’s a natural local file store data lock free ‘file format’ for a concept map or mind map application.

Treat each node as a file system directory (folder) and make the node name the name of the folder. Treat hierarchical relationships between nodes as container relationships in the file system. Represent other arcs as hard links (unix) or soft links/shortcuts/alias contained with a folder. (Would be good to be able to distinguish Aliases that represent relationships between nodes from Aliases to system files that are properties of the node, such as an nvAlt/Simplenote text file.)

Treat other contents of a folder as properties of the node, such as notes (plain text, RTF, etc). 

And so on.

That’s the file “format”, the UI can be any variant of current Mindmap/concept map. User interactions turn into file system calls.

I’m sure someone has done this somewhere. Anyone know of a reference?

Google and the Net 2015: The Quick, the Sick and the Dead - 7th edition

I first published a Google Quick, Sick and Dead list in January 2009, at the dawn of Dapocalypse. This was six months after the Battle of Latitude; we were well into the post-Android Google-Apple War I. By then the iPhone was big, but not as dominant as it would get.

Less than two years later, in July of 2011, Google Plus launched. Five months later Google Reader Shares vanished and Google 1.0 was declared dead. Looking back, a lot of software became ill in 2011.

Again with the damned interesting times! Since then many cloud services have been killed or abandoned. We’re growing accustomed to major regressions in software functionality with associated data loss (most recently with Apple’s Aperture). I am sure businesses struggle with the rate of change.

Looking back the 2009+ software turmoil probably arose from 2 factors, one technological and one external. The technological factor was, in a word, the iPhone. Mobile blew up the world we knew. The external factor was the Great Recession (which, in Europe, continues today as the Lesser Depression). 

Of course if you believe the Great Recession has its roots in globalization and IT (including IT enabled fraud and IT enabled globalization) [1] then it’s really all a post-WW II thing. I suppose that’s how it will look to the AIs.

Which brings me back to my Google Quick Sick and Dead series. It’s been more than four years since the 6th edition. I haven’t had the heart to update the list the way I once did — too many old friends have become ill. I’m doing an update today because I started a post on the Google Calendar iPad experience and it got out of control.

As with prior editions this is a review of the Google Services I use personally — so neither Android nor Chromebooks are on the list. It’s also written entirely from my personal perspective; I don’t care how the rest of the world sees Google Search, for me it’s dying.

With those caveats, here’s the list. Items that have effectively died since my last update are show with a strike-through but left in their 2011 categorization, old items have their 2011 category in parentheses. Items in italics are particularly noteworthy.

The Quick (Q) 

• Google Scholar (Q)
• Chrome browser (Q)
• Maps and Earth (Q)
• News (Q)
• Google Drive and core productivity apps - Docs, Sheets, Present (Q)
• YouTube (Q)
• Google Profile (Q)
• Google Translate (S)

The Sick (S)

• Google Parental Controls (D)
• Gmail (Q)
• Google Checkout (S)
• iGoogle (S)

The Walking Dead (D)

• Google Search (S)
• Google Custom Search (D)
• Google Contacts (Q)
• Google Hangout (S): on iOS
• Google Voice (D)
• Google Mobile Sync (S)
• Google’s Data Liberation Front (S)
• Google Calendar (Q)
• Google Tasks (Q)
• Picasa Web Albums (Q)
• Blogger (D)
• Google Books (S)
• Google Plus (Q)
• Buzz (D)
• Google Groups (D)
• Google Sites (D)
• Knol (D)
• Firefox/IE toolbars (D)
• Google Talk (D)
• Google Reader (S)
• Orkut (S)
• Google Video Chat (S) - replaced by G+ Hangout

A lot has happened in four years. I was surprised to see I’d rated Google Search as “sick” in 2011 — but that was the right call. In my personal experience Search has moved into the Dead zone since; I am often unable to locate items that I know exist. I have to find them by other means.

 

I haven’t adopted any new Google Services since 2011. On the other hand hand many services I thought would die have simply remained “Walking Dead”. Google Scholar’s persistence is quixotic; I figure Larry Page is personally fond of it.

 

Google Calendar is the Canary case. Four years ago Calendar was due for some updates, but it looked healthy. My immediate family members each have 1 Google Calendar; with various other family and school calendars and event feeds our total number of subscribed calendars is probably in the mid 20s. We use Google Calendar with Calendars 5.app on iOS and Safari or Chrome elsewhere. We’re Calendar power users.

 

Since 2011 though Calendars has stagnated. Google’s only “improvement” has been a partially reversed 2011 usability reduction. Today, thanks to our school district’s iPad program, I got to experience Google Calendar on the iPad without the benefit of Calendars 5 

[2]. It’s an awful experience; the “mobile” view is particularly abysmal. Suddenly four years of stagnation leapt into focus. Google Calendar is now an Android/Chrome only product.

 

Looking across the list there’s a pattern. Google is abandoning its standards based and internet services, focusing instead on Android and an increasingly closed Chrome-based ecosystem. Presumably those two will merge and Google and Apple will become mirror images. It’s unclear if anything will inherit the non-video streaming internet, or if it will simply pass into history. Maybe our best hope is that smaller standards-friendly ventures like Fastmail, Pinboard, WordPress, and Feedbin may prosper in an ecosystem Google has abandoned.

  

Damn, but it’s been one hell of a ride. The take away for me is that I need to get away from Google, but that’s easy to say and hard to do. Replacing my family’s grandfathered Google Apps services with the Fastmail equivalent would cost over $600 a year and the migration would take a non-trivial chunk of my lifespan. History is better to read than to experience, and we’re still early into the AI age.

 

- fn -

 

[1] It’s a different blog post, but widespread hacking (governments included) and ubiquitous identity theft may yet kill Internet 1.0. As of as Jon Robb predicted in 2007 the Internet itself is ailing.

[2] I haven’t been able to get my own iPad purchase past Gordon’s Laws of Acquisition. Those same laws have stopped my iPhone 6 purchase. Maybe I can justify the iPad by keeping my 5s.

See also:

• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #1 (1/09)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #2 (11/09)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #3 (6/10)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #4 (10/10)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #5 (5/11)
• Google Quick, Sick and Dead #6 (9/11)
• AvantGo RIP - memories of the roaring 90s 6/2009
• Software died three years ago. Why? 12/2014.
• Apple kills yet another photo sharing service - and generally screws up iOS photo management 9/2014
• How quickly can businesses adapt? 7/2014
• Apple and the 2013 tech world - in the doldrums 8/2012
• Project Ducky - why I’ve stopped using new Cloud services 3/2013
• Fraud and Globalization: Toy Story III 6/2007

Apple kills yet another photo sharing service - and generally screws up iOS photo management

I expect Apple to screw up anything related to long term data management, but this is extreme even by their standards. GigaOm, in language restrained by fear of Apple, tells us of another Apple datacide and botched product transition.

In the article quoted below “iPhoto” is iPhoto.app for iOS. Given the timid language, I’ve added some inline translation in square brackets …

https://gigaom.com/2014/09/27/where-are-my-photos-how-to-use-the-new-photo-management-features-in-ios-8/   

[iPhoto.app has been removed from iOS, replaced by Photos.app with fewer capabilities, including loss of iPhoto Web journals.] 

… In November of 2010 .Mac HomePages gave way to MobileMe Web Galleries. Then in June of 2012, MobileMe Web Galleries ceased to exist as iCloud came online. Now the most recent successor, iPhoto Web journals, is being shut down, or at least that is how it appears. With each transition, users of the previous online journaling feature really had little to no options available when it came to migration to a new or replacement feature. [users were totally screwed and lost hundreds of hours of work with no recourse] 

… you could add titles, insert comments, include maps, weather and other information intermingled with your photos. Users of journals would typically spend a good amount of time personalizing the delivery of their online photos by telling a story alongside their photos. 

The problem this time around is that there was very little notice and there really is no recourse or action that can be taken to preserve your iPhoto projects. … “Photo Books, Web Journals, and Slideshows are converted into regular albums in Photos. Text and layouts are not preserved.” And thats it, no more iCloud scrapbooking per Apple. 

… Apple has finally removed the concept of the Camera Roll …  all of the photos you have taken, whether they are on your device or not, now show up in the same “Recently Added” folder. This is not just a simple name change, it is a completely different experience. All of your photos are now synced across all of your devices, or at least the last thirty days worth. 

… iOS 8 has actually made it even harder to delete photos stored on your device [image capture delete all no longer works]. Tap and hold a photo in your “Recently Added” album and delete it from the album. It will move into the newly created “Recently Deleted” album …  delete it again from the “Recently Deleted” album…

Apple is a bit of a serial data killer -- usually with no public response. I still miss the comments I'd attached to iPhoto albums that were lost in the transition to Aperture.

Speaking of Aperture, both iPhoto (and Aperture) for Mac have been sunset, though Aperture is still sold. All three are eventually to be replaced by “Photos.app”, which may be an improvement on iPhoto but is certain to be a disaster for Aperture users. We can expect a large amount of personal metadata to be lost. (No, Lightroom is not a migration path.)

New users may be transiently better off once all the pieces are finally in place -- until the projects they invest in disappear. This is a cultural problem with Apple, not a bug that will get fixed. Never make Apple the owner of your data.

Apple kills Aperture. Observations.

In an alternate universe….

Today in a terse but clear posting on the Aperture web site Tim Cook apologized for the difficult decision to end Apple’s competition in the professional and prosumer photography market. He promised to fully cooperate with Adobe on a migration path to Lightroom that would convert Aperture non-destructive edit metadata to Lightroom format. All image metadata would be preserved. Group, Album and Smart Album functionality would suffer, but Adobe promised to improve their tools to ease the transition. Aperture sales were immediately discontinued. Support through Yosemite and ongoing RAW image updates for new cameras was promised through 2016. Users were saddened but appreciated Apple’s professional approach….

That would be a pleasant universe.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the announcement that Aperture was dead, and that Apple was effectively abandoning professional photography, appeared via Jim Dalrymple’s blog. Aperture remained on sale in the App Store while muddled Apple clarifications showed up in various blogs. Some said saying there would be support through Yosemite, others hinted at helping Adobe with migration to Lightroom. As end-of-life announcements go it was a complete screw-up.

Oh - but users of Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro “should not worry about their apps—they will continue as normal”.

Right.

The impact on heavy users of Aperture is heard to overstate. That’s why Gruber’s “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” earned his feed a Gordon-death-click. Maybe I’ll return someday, but The Loop covers the same ground and is a bit less irritating - albeit equally uncritical of Apple. I’m sure Gruber is devastated.

I won’t dwell on the migration path ahead, though it makes my excruciating transition from iPhoto look like a walk in the park. As of today none of my 20,000 or so non-destructive image edits will convert to Lightroom, much less album/image relationships, image/project, folder/image/project, folder/project comments, geo-tags and more. I won’t even mention Videos (which were never well supported in Aperture or iPhoto).

I’m not doing anything for a while, but one immediate impact is that I won’t be buying any camera that Aperture doesn’t currently support. If Aperture will indeed work on Yosemite then I’ve got years to convert — and I won’t be upgrading to Yosemite if there’s any doubt about Aperture support. (Which means no major Apple hardware purchases next year.)

Beyond Apple’s announcement fiasco, I was struck by the generally dismissive commentary — as though it were a trivial move to go to Lightroom. Happily, now that I’ve killed Daring Fireball, I can say the blogs I follow are relatively realistic about the impact of Aperture’s demise.

It’s not just Aperture users who have grounds to worry. Given Apple’s software record over the past 5 years (iBooks, iMovie, Podcast, Aperture 1, etc) what’s the chance Photos will be safe for serious iPhoto users before 2018? iPhoto users are back in Apple photo management limbo.

On a larger front I’ve written before of Data Lock, and of how the “Cloud” is making data lock even stronger. I knew the risk I took with iPhoto 2 11 years ago [1]; a path that has led to the dead end of Photos.app.

The way Apple executed Aperture’s termination is a rich lesson in the consequences of data lock (a risk I understood when I signed up with iPhoto long years ago). Does anyone think it will be possible to move from Apple’s next generation Photo app to Lightroom? That’s a far harder problem than moving from Aperture to Lightroom — and that’s nearly inconceivable at the moment.

I can’t do much about the way Apple handled this transition — other than spare myself the temptation of a camera purchase. I can, however, reduce my purchases of Apple products — especially Apple software. I have no faith in Apple at all.

[1] From my ancient web page on digital photography: 

Problems: iPhoto 2 through 5

iPhoto has longstanding problems. I knew of them when I started with iPhoto 2, but I took the gamble that the large user community, and the prominence of Apple's multimedia iLife suite, would pressure Apple to improve the product. That hasn't worked. If you're a PC user you should not switch to a Mac for digital photo management, instead I'd recommend Picasa (free from Google). If you're a Mac user, take a close look at iView MediaPro -- though that's a risky choice too (small market, hard for vendor to compete against iLife).

If you proceed with iPhoto, know the risks …

Data Lock - You can check in, but you can't check out.
You can export images -- though it's tricky to export both originals and modifications. You can't, however, migrate your albums, smart albums, comments, keywords, captions, etc. etc. I thought iView MediaPro would take advantage of this and sell and import utility, but they haven't. So when you use iPhoto, you marry iPhoto…

Update 6/28/2014: Clark Goble responds with more eloquence …

as Apple pushes more and more the lock-in of iCloud, of iBooks, and of iTunes video, why should we trust Apple if they don’t have a way to get the data out? This is the thing that some activists have preached for years and most of us have discounted.5 But now I think it’s a real question Apple has unintentionally made very significant. Why should I trust Apple not to lose interest in iBooks if sales drop? (Which apparently they have) iTunes Music isn’t a big deal because there’s no DRM. But the rest? Why should I store files in iWork?

Can we trust Apple? The cavalier way Apple is responding is telling us, no we can’t. And that’s a shame because they could easily have made this announcement in a way that said we could

I particularly appreciated his footnotes…

… I remember Apple fans ridiculing people trusting Microsoft with Plays For Sure DRM when that product collapsed and people lost their data. Many of those same people are pretty flippant about locked data today. ↩

I doubt rumors of Apple adding a Lightroom export will include being able to port both your raw data files and the adjustments you made to the files. You’ll either have to export as TIFFs or lose your adjustments simply because the math won’t be exactly the same. Heck, I’m skeptical they’ll export anything beyond metadata and files… 

Project Ducky - why I've stopped using new Cloud services.

Dilbert 04/14/1994:

Yeah, Google Reader is on many geek minds today, but it's not the only cloud death to disrupt my routine.  Today, working in Aperture, I tried searching on a AppleScript workaround for Aperture's single-window mangled Project problems. I found a couple of good references -- to Apple .Mac pages that died with MobileMe. The page owners never recreated their lost resources.

Later I wanted to upload some photos from our special hockey team. I remembered then that Google discontinued Mac/Picasa integration and the iPhoto Plug-in.

Within a year I expect Google is going to discontinue Blogger, which currently hosts this blog.

Enough.

I'm on strike. You want my business? Give me standards. Give me products I pay for that have low exit costs and that have competitors. 

Oh, yeah, Google - go away.

See also:

• Nimbophobia: 4 more reasons to fear the cloud 6/2011 (Actually I've pretty much been on strike since then, but now I'm doubly on strike).
• Dapocalypse now: Google's day of infamy 10/2011 - end of Reader Shares.
• What Evernote reminded me about my Cloud services - and my 2013 security policies 3/2013
• Gordon's Notes: Gordon's Laws for software and service use 4/2010: "Can you get your data out in a useable way? If not, run, run, run."

Google's war on standards: RSS, ActiveSync, now CalDAV

I remember when Google seemed to be somewhat friendly to standards and to the idea of open interchange.

That was, of course, Google 1.0. Now we live with Google 2.0.

With the neglect of Blogger, the end of Google Reader, and the RSS-free launch of G+, Google has put a stake in the RSS/Atom subscription standard. (Google played a big role in the development of Atom, when most of us write of "RSS" we mean "RSS/Atom".)

Recently Google limited support for ActiveSync, a de facto standard based on Microsoft Exchange technologies.

Now Clark reminds me that they've also ended CalDAV support, which I use to view my Google Calendars on my 11" Air:

Official Blog: A second spring of cleaning

... CalDAV API will become available for whitelisted developers, and will be shut down for other developers on September 16, 2013. Most developers’ use cases are handled well by Google Calendar API, which we recommend using instead. If you’re a developer and the Calendar API won’t work for you, please fill out this form to tell us about your use case and request access to whitelisted-only CalDAV API...

I'm glad I never committed to Android. I'm deeply enmeshed in the Google ecosystem, but it is time I started digging out.

ADN.NET: To get beyond social app.net needs to make parting painless

I love app.net as it is now, but nothing is forever. App.net is a specialized taste, and it needs to grow to survive.

That growth might come from its current social network features (ex: my stream and its RSS feed), but it would be good to have other growth options. Current work includes competitors to messaging, chat rooms, Google Reader Shares, and file and photo sharing.

I'm hoping several of these efforts will catch on, but first people like me need to use them and talk about them. (Like me, but with more fans :-). Problem is, we're a wary bunch. We hate losing our content.

That suggests a first principal for ADN beyond-social. Painless exits.

That's hard to do for anything non-trivial. Of all my Cloud services, only my Simplenote/Notational Velocity data is truly free. If Simplenote expired tomorrow, all of my content would remain on my hard drive and I could move it readily to Dropbox for sharing. It wouldn't be as good as what I have now, but I could keep going.

Beyond Simplenote things get harder. The next tier of freedom is probably Domain transfer, static web page hosting, and perhaps Wordpress migration. After that maybe moving Contacts and Calendars, perhaps moving email (but not archives) ... 

Yeah, Data Lock is ubiquitous.

So maybe it's time to try something different.

Google and Facebook: how Chrome supports life with an dully evil corporation

Just three years ago Facebook's Gordon's Evil Score was 12, and Google was a mere 6. Today, 3 months after Google's day of infamy, I'd give Google 10, Facebook 8, and Apple a 6. (Philip Morris gets 15. Evil is relative.)

These days Facebook is less evil than Google 2.0, probably because Facebook has been on pre-IPO best behavior. Post-IPO I expect 'em to hang with Google in the gray zone of generic AT&T-style corporate badness. After all, both companies package and sell us.

So why is Facebook's badness boring, and Google's badness Bad?

It's because we always knew Facebook was evil. I never gave FB anything I couldn't walk away from. If Facebook went away tomorrow, I'd be slightly sad.

Google though, Google once made me smarter. Our family uses Google Apps. My shared images are in Google's web albums. A lot of my external memory is Google dependent (so losing Google Reader shares felt like a mini-lobotomy). Google search, born in the day of the ad-infested Portal, was beautiful.

Google though, Google was going to make free the world's knowledge.

Google though, Google wants to build a sentient AI. Do we want our first sentient AI born of our bad parents?

That's why Google's Page-driven race to the Darkseid matters a lot more than Facebook's perennial villainy. We loved Google, we trusted Google,  we married Goole and made Data together -- and we were chumps. (Some of us are still in denial.)

What now? Well, Google hasn't turned into Philip Morris -- and it probably never will. They've just become as evil as most publicly traded corporations -- and a lot of us work for those. Besides, we can't completely divorce. Think of the Data. [1]

So I'm still living with Google. Yeah, I did try Bing. Have you ever used Bing? Go and give it a try. I'll wait here for a while. Right. Even EvilGoogle is better than Bing.

I'm living with Google, but I'm keeping my distance. Coincidentally (?) Chrome recently made this much easier.

Chrome now supports client-side identity management. On my Mac the Preferences:Personal Stuff menu has a "Users" section. A "User" is simply a separate identity, where an "identity" is a set of cookies, credentials, bookmarks, cache and so on. Optionally, a "User" on Chrome can be associated with a Google account, and Chrome/Google credentials and bookmarks sync between those accounts. These don't have to be Google+ accounts [2]. If you link a Chrome User to a non-Google+ account, you're basically using GoogleMinus. That's what I do.

In Chrome I currently switch between 5 Users as needed, each with a paired Google account. One user is my original TrueName "113" Google account. I deleted that account's G+ Profile, so this "User" gives me something of an old-style GoogleMinus experience. This account owns my Google Docs, my Email, my Calendar, and way too many Google properties to remember (including the remnants of Google Reader social.)

I use my G+ John Gordon identity with Blogger [3] and Google Reader (I moved GR subscriptions over to this account). I have yet another identity associated with my corporate work, another with our family domain, and then 1-2 more to make it easy to switch between the kid's Google accounts [4].

Google Chrome has made it easier to live with Google 2.0, but it's an uneasy relationship. Evil Facebook is fine -- because I don't care. Evil Google is not a good long term relationship. I'm seeing other services now, services like Pinboard.in and the shared items I post there. It will take decades, but I'm hoping true alternatives to Google will emerge. Alternatives that charge real money for their services. That's how I'll know they're worth being with.

[1] It's no coincidence that when Google turned evil, the Data Liberation team fell silent.
[2] For now, though in future that might be impossible to avoid.
[3] Google's blogs can have multiple contributors, so I just made John Gordon an admin on blogs that started with John F. as admin. Early on Google forbade pseudonyms in G+ accounts; now they only require that pseudonyms "appear" to be well formed, generic names not associated with celebrities or historic figures.
[4] All through our family domain. They don't know the passwords.

See also:

Others

• Microsoft, Apple, and Google: where does the money come from? | ZDNet 2/2012
• The ‘Eggs In One Basket’ Index - SplatF 2/2012 Google is fully dependent on Advertising revenue
• Facebook, Google, and the Future of the Online 'Commons' 2/3/2012. Fallows is soft on Google. He hasn't come to terms with the new Google.
• Against the wall – Marco.org 2/1/2012 - no illusions here
• Google's Broken Promise: The End of "Don't Be Evil" (Gizmodo, 1/2012)

Me

• Gordon's scale of corporate evil - 3rd edition 11/2011
• Google 2.0 11/2011
• Dapocalypse now: Google's day of infamy 10/2011
• Google 1.0 is dead. When did it start dying? 11/2011
• Divorcing Google - and hoping for GoogleMinus 1/2012
• Responding to Facebook’s lions: Stop friends using the apps 12/2009
• I deleted my Google G+ Profile 11/2011

Dapocalypse now: Google's day of infamy

I shared thousands of articles through Google Reader.

They were a part of my extended memory. I often searched that repository.

This evening they are gone.

I had expected bad news, but I didn't expect the entire shared story repository to vanish.

Yes, there's a JSON export. I will do it of course, but Google is not providing any tools to navigate or transform that data set. The export of data in a non-useable format is no export at all.

Dapocalypse now. Google, I want a divorce.

Update: The JSON export links aren't working for me.

Nimbophobia: 4 more reasons to fear the cloud

It's been a gratifying week for my fellow nimbophobics. Our numbers are growing by leaps and bounds. Consider just four examples ...

• Apple MobileMe transition and iCloud: Those beautiful online albums of thousands of images and videos? Kiss them all good-bye. Your massive web site? Sayonara.
• A few weeks after being caught dissembling about their encryption keys, Dropbox accidentally removes all security for all accounts for four hours.
• Google is shuttering its hugely hyped Google Health Personal Health Record. Hope you weren't relying on those online medical records you entered.
• My longstanding and much appreciated Google Custom Search pages are, as of today, abruptly overwhelmed with copious top and side Google ads.

These stories range from appalling (Apple) to annoying (excess ads in custom search pages). The Google PHR fail would be the worst, but it's somewhat mitigated by the data exit options they provide and by the two year warning. Those options include CCR XML migration to Microsoft's HealthVault [1].

Friends don't let friends rely on the Cloud. Don't put anything in the Cloud unless you have a way to move your data to an alternative platform. That's as true for your business processes as it is for your family photos.

[1] Any health informatics students looking for a semester project or an easy publishable paper? Create a PHR in Google Health Records. Export as CCR XML. Import into Microsoft HealthVault. Write a paper on the data loss.

Bright side: Apple's computer for the rest of us

It's not the best of times. Long Depression 2.0 grinds on. China is increasingly unsettled -- and it's sitting on one of history's great bubbles. American corporations may have decided the American middle class is finished, done in by globalization and IT enabled automation and outsourcing. Spear phishing (Chinese?) caught white house "aides" (Obama?). Core security systems have been compromised. Peak Oil. Pakistan, North Korea, Yemen. The ChromeBook costs 200% too much. Weather badness and rising CO2.

Worst of all, I can't buy a quality dehumidifier at any price.

It's a bit much, even for me. I've got to find some happier things to say -- even if I've got to dig deep.

Today's happy thought - in Fall 2011 Apple will be make my Jan 2010 prediction true ...

Gordon's Notes: Computing for the rest of us: The iPad and the ChromeBook (Jan 2010)

.. The iPad's a pretty thing, but the combination of iVOIP and the return of the Mac Plus and the keyboard and $10 iWorks apps and the $15/month no-contract 250MB limited data plan might shorten Jobs time in Limbo.

... the 2010 [3G] iPad is more than $500 - but by 2011 the device will sell for under $500 with 3G-equivalent capabilities. An additional $15 a month will provide basic VOIP phone services (uses very little bandwidth) and access to email and Facebook Lite -- even before the advertising subsidies kick in. Of course free Wifi access, such as in libraries, McDonald's, schools and so on will provide access to full internet services....

... Think about your family. If it's big enough, your extended family will have at least one person who's, you know, poor. They may have cognitive or psychiatric disabilities. Or you may have a family member who, like most of American, can't keep a modern OS running without an on call geek. These people are cut off. They can barely afford a mobile phone, and they won't have both a mobile phone and a landline. They will have little or no net access. They may have an MP3 player, but it's dang hard to use one without a computer.

By 2011 the combination of a $400 iPad (and iTouch for less) and $15/month VOIP access will start to replace a number of devices that are costly to own and acquire, while providing basic net services at a rate that other family members can subsidize. Not to mention something pretty, which, speaking as someone who grew up poor, ain't a bad thing...

Apple's iCloud [3] and iOS combination mean most families won't need an energy sucking, loud, unstable, unsupportable, malware infested winbox. They will buy a signed-code curated app library iPad with integrated backup and offline media libraries [1]. They will also, unwittingly, accept FairPlay DRM -- which is the best balanced DRM system I've lived with [2].

This will make the world a better place.

Of course there's a silky black lining to the silver cloud, but let's not go there just yet ...

See also:

• The $80 ultra-portable - in unexpected form 9/2010
• Cricket’s $149 Android and the future $4000 Dell desktop 10/2010 - Post-PC predictions
• Buying my Chrome OS (XP) Netbook 7/2009 (Except I didn't. Now I'm buying a MacBook Air.)
• Why you will live in an iOS world 12/2010 - Signed code, curated software
• Computing for the rest of us: The iPad and the ChromeBook 1/2010
• I, Cringely - iCloud’s real purpose: kill Windows

[1] If money is tight however, and a user foregoes home internet service for the $15/month iPad data plan, they really don't want to be streaming their media library. They'll want to do their iPad backup at a local cafe or library.
[2] It's so good it's silently accepted. It's freakin' brilliant and Apple gets no credit. Of course they don't want credit -- because they don't want anyone to notice it. 
[3] In all the iCloud discussions so far there's mention of Apple's prior efforts at iTools, .Mac, and MobileMe. Few remember the 1980s AppleLink (later the basis of AOL when it was interesting) and the 1990s eWorld. Sixth time lucky?

Reconciliation May 2011: The posts I won't get to

Reconciliation for May 2011 ...

• Elderly Drivers Fail a Test (NYT) and Some Older Workers, Pressured to Quit, Fight Back (NYT): Why raising the retirement age won't work. Our brains don't last.
• The Blind Use The Visual Cortex To Process Sound (SciAm): I've long wondered about how we evolved the ability to read -- to convert images into sounds. It seems an unnatural use of the brain, even for an animal that must have been good at sign language. Given these latest findings, the ability to read may be just another manifestation of astonishing brain plasticity.
• The Early Days of Eugenics: 1911 SciAm article on Eugenics. "The proper attitude to be taken toward the perpetuation of poor types is that which has been attributed to Huxley. "We are sorry for you," he is reported to have said; "we will do our best for you (and in so doing we elevate ourselves, since mercy blesses him that gives and him that takes), but we deny you the right to parentage. You may live, but you must not propagate."
• Medicaid a Big Deal Too | Talking Points Memo: The real budget problem is not social security or medicare or medicaid. The real problem is that our bodies outlive our brains. Demographers knew this day was coming back in the 1970s. That's when we should have invested in slowing the onset of dementia.
• Third Depression Watch - NYT: The good news is that Krugman is no longer talking about the Great Recession. The bad news is that he's talking about the 2nd Long Depression. (See also: Leonhardt, 2008)
• Frothy Real Estate in Manhattan: $5.5 million apartment
• Reassessing The Cost Of The Post-9/11 Era, Post Bin Laden (Froomkin): Was bin Laden the most successful investor in history? With our help he turned mere millions into a successful trillion dollar attack on America.
• Jann Wenner is my hero - Cringely and The People vs. Goldman Sachs | Rolling Stone: Corporate control of American media - more than you think
• Software Reviewing as it Should Be Done - James Fallows and Zeoli on Tinderbox: A quixotic effort to push the boundaries of Xanadu, but not a word about data lock.
• Inequality Rising Across the Developed World - NYT Rampell: Not only America.
• Quote of the Week, Last Week Edition - Jeffrey Goldberg: Obama's famous quote on birthers, spoken while he was secretly leading the bin Laden hit.

Where now for the iOS Borders eBook reader?

Borders is in bankruptcy. Its future is quite uncertain.

Of course the books we bought there are still good. The paper ones that is ...

Borders launches eBook reader for iPhone

... Borders has entered the battle for dominance of the iPhone eBook market. Well sort of. Today Borders launched an official eBook app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. But it’s basically just a rebranded version of the Kobo app which has been available since last week.

Kobo and Borders are partners in the eBook space, with Kobo powering the Borders eBook store. Kobo also sells a physical eBook reader with an E Ink display that competes with the Amazon Kindle, and which has access to the Borders eBook store...

I've read elsewhere that Kobo is still in business, though I suspect Borders was their primary partner. This is probably not a good time to buy a Kobo reader.

The average lifespan of a Fortune 500 company is 40-50 years. I think we can assume that the lifespan of file formats in general, and Digital Rights Management standards is significantly less than that. Make your purchases accordingly.